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Prime Prep Academy nearing settlement with former landlord

Deion Sanders (left) and D.L. Wallace, founders of Prime Prep Academy in 2012. Both are gone from the school after a high-profile fight for control last fall.

A court hearing about a former Prime Prep Academy landlord who entered the campus and took property ended without sanctions or any drama this morning.

At the last minute, both parties agreed to have the hearing by phone rather than in person in downtown Fort Worth. And Prime Prep was no longer seeking sanctions – at least for now – against Fredrick R. Mays, the former landlord and founder of Charity Church.

The parties told state District Judge John P. Chupp that they had reached an agreement to settle their differences. There are undisclosed “thresholds” that must be met before Prime Prep drops its lawsuit.

In a court filing last month, Prime Prep officials said Charity Church founder Fredrick R. Mays entered their new campus in June with at least six other people and took school property. Mays had claimed that the property belonged to his church and has been in a lease dispute with the school for months.

The filing said Mays and his crew “intimidated teachers and staff” and stayed on the campus for an hour and a half.

A Prime Prep employee wrote in an affidavit that one man said Mays picked him up from under a bridge on Lancaster Avenue in Fort Worth to help with the move. The employee also said some of the men had teardrop tattoos, which can symbolize that the person has killed someone.

Prime Prep officials also said in its court filings that Charity Church wasn’t paying its share of the utility bills for the old campus, which would violate the court’s temporary injunction.

The school has been in a dispute for most of this year with Charity Church and Mays. The church leased the campus to Prime Prep since the school opened in fall 2012.

Mays claimed the school was behind on rent when he kicked them off their east Fort Worth property this spring. Prime Prep officials said they had a lease showing that Mays had agreed to provide the property for free.

D.L. Wallace, Prime Prep’s co-founder had initially struck the generous free-rent deal with Mays. Wallace and Mays have been business partners, and Wallace had also been a church board member.

The lease change happened quietly during a high-profile fight for control of the school between Wallace and school co-founder Deion Sanders, a former NFL star. Last fall, Kevin Jefferson, the school’s chief financial officer, signed a new lease that would pay Charity Church $18,000 per month in rent.

The current Prime Prep administration has claimed that Jefferson did not have the authority to sign that new lease and the old one is still in effect.

School officials said in court filing that they were unaware of the new lease until they saw checks written for $18,000 to Charity Church. Those checks were written by Chazma Jones, then a school employee and Wallace’s wife.

Jefferson, who is no longer with the school, is also a former business partner of Wallace and Mays. Jefferson also alleged that Sanders assaulted him during a staff meeting last fall, which started the public falling out between the co-founders.

After Prime Prep sued over the eviction, the two sides settled on the sharing of utilities for the original Prime Prep campus and also agreed to catalog the school inventory. Prime Prep officials said they were still working out the logistics of returning Charity Church property when Mays showed up on campus.

Chupp told the parties this morning that he wanted a status conference in late December to see if this could be settled before the spring semester. He told both sides he was concerned about the dispute disrupting the students’ education.

There is no guarantee, though, that there will be a spring 2015 semester for Prime Prep. The Texas Education Agency recently announced that it intended to revoke Prime Prep’s charter. The school has until Wednesday to file an appeal with the agency.

Unless Prime Prep wins its appeals or the TEA withdraws its revocation plans, the school wouldn’t learn its fate until well into the fall semester.

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